


The Landlord

by Sparklefists



Series: Arson Around [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, Sort Of, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 15:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparklefists/pseuds/Sparklefists
Summary: Since the accident, and with his father abroad for months at a time, Ryou is always alone at home. Until he starts to suspect he isn't...





	The Landlord

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!
> 
> Happy Hallowe'en!

 

At first Ryou thought he was imagining things. His mother used to say he was an imaginative little boy. And he knows he sometimes loses sight of the line between what’s real and what’s unreal, when it’s his 27th consecutive hour without sleep and his eyes are grainy with the dense text of his novel and the sickly saffron taste of the streetlights streaming in his bedroom window is dry on his tongue.

 

So the first time he heard - he thought he heard, he sensed - a soft set of creaking footsteps elsewhere in the house when he was the only one home, alone and quiet, he shook his head and reluctantly sifted through the debris on his bed for his bookmark.

 

And the first time he came downstairs in the morning to find a third slice missing from the cheerfully sugar-saturated too-perfect pie he’d bought the previous night, when he was sure - he thought he was sure, he thought - he had only eaten two for dinner, he shook his head and remembered when he used to sleepwalk, in the weeks after the accident and wondered if it was happening again because it was near the anniversary.

 

And the first time he saw a flicker of something pale, something moving, in his own front window as he turned onto his street after walking home from school, his mostly-empty book bag on his shoulders and the plastic bag of takeaway cutting into his fingers, when he knows - he knows - he’s the only one who’s ever home anymore, he shook his head and blinked his eyes and promised himself he’d go to sleep before 3 am tonight even if he’s only halfway through planning his Dragons of Innsmouth RPG campaign. Not like he has anyone to play it with at the moment anyway.

 

But the fourth time he noticed the pattern of crumbs on the kitchen counter was all wrong and different from how it had been when he left the house, he started to wonder…

 

Ryou read a lot about ghosts. He thought a lot about ghosts. He wrote long letters to ghosts.

 

Maybe his letters were finally being answered.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nothing would happen for days at a time, then several things would happen at once, like the ghost went through moods, or periods of rest.

 

His house is quite old, one of the earliest “western-style” houses in Domino. Ryou thinks of the house as his own now, even though legally, obviously, it’s his father’s. But his father’s presence is so rare and fleeting that his impression is very faint. The tins of soup in the kitchen are all Ryou’s preferred flavours - spicy tomato, chicken noodle - and not the heavy vegetable soups that his father eats. The books and papers marshalled into half-formed cairns in the living room are Ryou’s - fantasy novels, RPG character sheets, paranormal magazines - with only the occasional history book; no academic texts and no financial newspapers. Ryou’s coat is the only one hanging in the hall, Ryou’s brand of toothpaste is the only one half-empty, Ryou’s taste was the only one consulted when the curtains in the front window got mildew and he had to get them replaced.

 

His house is quite old and it creaks and rattles, and the ghost made everything worse. Scraping noises in the attic, doors left open to bang at odd hours, whispering footsteps when Ryou was trying to sleep. Some nights the house would be dead silent, like it used to always be. Other nights, there would be disturbance after disturbance.

 

Ryou would creep out of bed, softly padding down the stairs, empty handed, trying to figure out where in the big house the soft, echoing footsteps that weren’t his were loudest.

 

In the front room, in the dark, in the dead of night, Ryou thought he heard a noise and turned on the light. The big window immediately turned into a dark, imperfect mirror and behind his own reflection he caught a glimpse of another figure, a little shorter than him with hair just as shock-pale as his, which turned and vanished, quicker than he could turn around.

 

“Wait!”

 

He was left facing the gaping void of an empty doorway to the hall.

 

He didn’t know if you could grow, after you died. Amane was so small when she was killed. But if she had lived, she would be a little shorter than Ryou, probably, being two years younger and a girl. He turned off the light and waited up all night, but she didn’t come back.

 

He left a note.

 

 

 

 

> _Is that you?_

 

* * *

 

 

A few weeks into the haunting, Ryou decided that the ghost haunting his house was not, to his disappointment, Amane.

 

This ghost was way too much of an asshole to be his younger sister.

 

This ghost made noise at night, left lights on, and stole things - Ryou’s bus pass, a book he wasn’t finished reading, milk for some reason. What could a ghost possibly want with milk and a bus pass, except to ruin Ryou’s morning?

 

But Ryou didn’t mind.

 

He left more notes.

 

 

 

 

> _Dear Ghost,_
> 
> _Please show yourself, if you can. Can you manifest on the physical plane?_
> 
> _Ryou_

 

 

 

 

> _Dear Ghost,_
> 
> _If you want me to help settle your soul to its final rest, I would be happy to be of assistance. But you have to let me know what your unfinished business is._
> 
> _Ryou_

 

 

 

 

> _Dear Ghost,_
> 
> _If you wouldn’t mind, can you please stop vanishing all the cookies before I can eat them? I mean, can you even taste them or are you just dematerialising them? Because it seems like a waste if you can’t taste them. If you can taste them, can’t we share?_
> 
> _Ryou_

 

 

 

 

> _Look, ghost, I know you have my student ID. I don’t know what use you could possibly have for it, but I need it back, okay?_

 

 

 

 

> _PLEASE STOP BANGING THE DOOR, GHOST!_

 

The notes were initially ignored. Ryou persisted. He left more notes, he trailed around the house at night in the dark, he lit candles and attempted several times to use a Ouiji board.

 

Then something changed. Ryou came home one evening to find the house chill and dark. Something caught his eye as he walked past the open door to the kitchen, and he glanced back.

 

Scrawled across the white countertop, roughly sketched out characters in a sharp, impatient hand ... in blood...

 

**IGNORE ME**

 

And a smeared handprint, like someone struck the counter, open-handed, in rage.

 

Ryou stared.

 

He had bought raw steak for dinner yesterday, but when he’d come home, he started a new series and had binge-watched the first three seasons before realising it was 4 am and he should go to bed, so the steak stayed in the fridge, uneaten.

 

The steak was gone. All that was left was its raw juice - not blood, but like it - used to leave Ryou a message.

 

Or a threat.

 

 

 

 

> _Dear Ghost,_
> 
> _Thank you for your message. I am very glad you’re real and able to make contact! Unfortunately, I am not in a position to honour your request to ignore you, as you are manifesting in my house, and steal an awful lot of my possessions. Including the steak, by the way, which was quite expensive. Please let me know if I can otherwise be of assistance. If possible, do use something less likely to be a vector for food-borne illnesses? I had to disinfect everything after the steak juice. But I understand if you can only exert your will over dead flesh. (Although the fact that you keep stealing books suggests that you are able to influence other corporeal objects besides dead flesh.)_
> 
> _Ryou_

 

The next morning, the note was crumpled up on the floor. But Ryou didn’t mind.

 

He decided he had to see the ghost in action.

 

Ryou loudly went to bed and lay awake, waiting…

 

A soft scraping, shuddering sound, half muffled and echoing along the empty hallway, like nails dragging across wood...

 

Ryou held his breath, listening. The sounds were almost imperceptible, but on the very edge of his hearing lingered soft, light footsteps, traces of a lost soul wandering…

 

He slid from his bed. He had oiled the creaking hinges of his door. He had mapped out the route downstairs that follows the stiff, silent edges of the old floorboards and never puts his weight on the almost-imperceptible sag of wood strung between the supporting slats.

 

He tip-toed towards the kitchen, a flat, sickly glow emanating from the crack where the door stood ajar, reflected in Ryou’d wide, dark eyes…

 

Ryou pushed the door open … a thin dark figure framed by that glow.

 

A solid person standing in front of the open fridge door, the fridge light gleaming in the 2 am darkness. Ryou gasped in surprise -- the fridge door slammed -- Ryou hit the lightswitch, flooding the kitchen with fluorescence.

 

They stared at one another, two teenage boys with white hair and skinny frames, both wearing one of Ryou’s pastel t-shirts.

 

The stranger raises his arms in a shrug, holding a slice of Ryou’s leftover pizza in one long hand. His face is thinner than Ryou’s - sharp and cutting - and his dark eyes are narrower, slanted and sly. He's a little shorter and he's wearing a pair of Ryou's old sneakers.

 

“Fine. You caught me. I’m not a ghost.”

 

Ryou screamed.

 

“What the hell? I said I’m _not_ a ghost!”

 

“That’s worse!” Ryou glared indignantly, and the boy glared back. “You’re in my house! You’re just a  … a thief!”

 

“Yes,” admitted the stranger, taking a bite of pizza. “But that should be much less terrifying for you than a supernatural presence. I went along with the ghost angle to try to scare you off!”

 

Ryou threw up his hands. “Scare me off? It’s my house!”

 

“Not scare you away. Just enough to let me keep coming here.” He gestures with the pizza to the kitchen. “I’m fucking starving and you never finish your dinner.”

 

Ryou sighed. “You’re a huge disappointment, ghost.” He turned away. “I’m going back to bed. There’s some pastries in that box that’ll go off soon, you can finish them. Goodnight, ghost.”

 

The sharp-faced boy watched him go, a thin, sharp smile spreading on his lips.

 

“Night, landlord.”

 

 

_

**Author's Note:**

> In Ryou's defense, real people can be way scarier than ghosts.
> 
> This is a peek into Bakura's backstory in the universe where my currently-ongoing prideshipping fic, Playing With Fire, takes place.


End file.
